Lighting

Lighting Update

Over the summer a small group have been working with the lighting designer to produce a ‘Concept’ document. This will give everyone a good idea about why we are changing the lighting, what the lighting is needed for and particularly, what the lighting will look like.

The major change will be that rather than trying to hide flood lights up by clerestory window, which make them difficult to maintain, and generally inadequate, we will be adopting a pendant scheme. The design of the pendants has not been decided yet, but is likely to be of an ‘arts and crafts design’ which will be in keeping with original architecture of the building

Additional lighting will be provided as discrete spotlights.

Such as illuminating the painting at the west end

The lighting for the main altar and the choir

As well as lighting in the clerestory windows and the roof

Further details of the proposed scheme will be shown as a display in church that will include more illustrations and explanations.

One important feature will be that the lighting scheme will give much greater control over light levels and areas to be lit, so that we can easily adapt for different services, general use, concerts, and exhibitions. However these different scenarios will all be computer controlled so that selecting a different lighting pattern will be a single button press, instead of changing banks of switches.

This is a very exciting scheme, but will obviously be expensive. We have already had some very generous gifts towards this, but we will also be looking for outside funding. A small team is being formed to take our new concept document to grant making bodies as an initial step in the process for applying for grants. We also need to apply to the Diocese for a faculty (permission to make changes to the church), which is usually a fairly lengthy process.

We hope everyone at St Paul’s is as excited about this project as we are. Not only will it bring us out of the gloom of the past few years, but it will provide a far more flexible system, easily operated, and far more maintainable. A very bright future!